HomeResearchLife insurance complaints
What people actually complain about in life insurance
Ask anyone what goes wrong with life insurance and they will say the company refused to pay. In the regulator’s own record of 928 complaints, that is not the biggest problem. 32% are about how the policy was sold. Claim handling is 19%.
- The single largest category is policyholder service, 42% of complaints. Most of that is people who cannot get an answer at all.
- The most common specific complaint in the whole register is delays or no response, 184 of 928.
- Misrepresentation is second, 125 complaints. That means the policy did not do what the buyer was told it would do.
- Source is the Connecticut Insurance Department’s public complaint register, 2022 to 2026, updated daily and in the public domain.
Every complaint, by what it was about
| Category | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Policyholder service | 386 | 42% |
| Marketing and sales | 295 | 32% |
| Claim handling | 177 | 19% |
| Underwriting | 66 | 7% |
Why this is the opposite of what people expect
The fear that stops people buying burial insurance is that the company will find a reason not to pay when the time comes. It is a reasonable fear and it is why the two year waiting period matters so much. But it is not what most complaints are about.
Add the two largest categories together and roughly two thirds of complaints are about the company being difficult to deal with while the policy is alive. People cannot get a reply, the billing is wrong, or the policy turned out not to be what they were sold. Claims are the third category, not the first.
That should change what you check before you buy. Ratings agencies measure whether an insurer can pay. They say nothing about whether you will be able to reach a human in year seven when the payment method changes and the notice goes to an old address.
The ten most common complaints, exactly as filed
| Complaint | Filed |
|---|---|
| Delays or no response | 184 |
| Misrepresentation | 125 |
| Claim delay | 70 |
| Premium notice or billing | 40 |
| Policy service delay by the insurer | 36 |
| Claim procedure | 32 |
| Unsatisfactory settlement or offer | 31 |
| Premiums misquoted | 26 |
| Producer handling | 26 |
| Coverage Question | 26 |
Which companies appear most
Read this before the table
This is a count, not a score. A company that writes ten times more policies will attract roughly ten times more complaints while treating people exactly as well. Nothing here adjusts for size, so the order below is not a ranking of which insurer is better, and we will not present it as one. It is published because the register is public and readers should be able to see it, not because it answers the question you probably came with.
| Company | Complaints |
|---|---|
| PHL Variable Insurance Company | 76 |
| Transamerica Life Insurance Company | 50 |
| Metropolitan Life Insurance Company | 45 |
| American General Life Insurance Company | 40 |
| John Hancock Life Insurance Company (USA) | 37 |
| Brighthouse Life Insurance Company | 36 |
| Prudential Insurance Company of America | 34 |
| ReliaStar Life Insurance Company | 33 |
| ReliaStar Life Insurance Company of New York | 21 |
| Protective Life Insurance Company | 20 |
| Lincoln National Life Insurance Company (The) | 19 |
| United of Omaha Life Insurance Company | 17 |
Method, and what this cannot tell you
- Source. Connecticut Insurance Department complaint register, published as open data by the State of Connecticut, updated daily, public domain.
- Filter. Coverage recorded as Individual Life. Group life, annuities and health are excluded.
- De-duplication. One complaint can appear as several rows where a case has more than one reason recorded. Rows are reduced to unique regulator file numbers, so 928 means 928 complaints, not records.
- One state. Connecticut is not America. It is used because it is the only state we found publishing individual complaints, with the reason attached, as machine-readable open data updated daily. If your state publishes the same, tell us and we will add it.
- Not size-adjusted. The company table counts complaints and nothing else. It is not a quality ranking.
- Why not the NAIC index. The obvious national source is the NAIC complaint index, and it does exist. Its terms require written permission before reproducing or distributing it, which we do not have, so it is not published here.
- Updates. This page reads the state API directly once a day, so it stays current without anyone republishing it.
Cite this
Free to quote with a link back. If you want a cut we have not published, ask.
Burial Estimator analysis of Connecticut Insurance Department complaint data, 2022 to 2026. https://burialestimator.com/research/life-insurance-complaints
Common questions
What do people complain about most with life insurance?
Not denied claims. Across 928 individual life complaints filed with the Connecticut Insurance Department, the largest category is policyholder service and the second is marketing and sales. The single most common specific complaint is delays or no response from the insurer. Claim handling is the third largest category, at about 19%.
Does a high complaint count mean a company is bad?
Not by itself. Complaint counts track how much business a company writes, so a large insurer will always record more complaints than a small one even when it treats people identically. A count is only meaningful once it is adjusted for market share, which is what the NAIC complaint index does. The proportions on this page, meaning what complaints are about, are not distorted by company size and are the fairer figure.
What does misrepresentation mean on a complaint?
That the policy did not do what the buyer understood it would do. In burial insurance the usual version is somebody being sold a guaranteed acceptance policy, which pays nothing for the first two years except a refund of premiums, without that being made clear. It is the most avoidable complaint on the list, and asking one question before signing avoids it: is this policy level benefit, graded, or guaranteed issue?
Which policies pay from day one · The Funeral Price Index · Carrier ratings and what they measure